EDITORIAL – We in Kamloops should be mad as hell about Afghanistan
(Image: Amber Clay, Pixabay.com)
IT’S VERY SELDOM that I write about events happening on the other side of the world but the Afghanistan fiasco hits close to the heart and closer to home than we might think.
We’ve all seen those gut-wrenching videos of panicked Afghans trying to escape the country before the Taliban impose a return to strict Sharia law. Meanwhile, thousands of non-Afghan citizens — including Canadians — desperately hope for rescue.
It’s impossible not to be mad as hell over this totally avoidable crisis. And the blame sits squarely on the shoulders of President Joe Biden, who tries to cover his own political butt by insisting that ending the American involvement in Afghanistan couldn’t possibly have been accomplished without chaos.
Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
This is also worth reading to further research on the subject. Please don’t be skeptical, be erudite. https://www.workers.org/2017/06/31585/
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Sure find a scapegoat, that’s the way it works usually. Besides the fact they should’ve never been there in the first place, did you check out the realities of war? A few American corporations reaping large profits…shouldn’t we be mad at that? And indirectly what about all the resources that were used to build the gadgets for the war efforts? Shouldn’t we be mad at that too? That’s the system we live in, but luckily for us we are in the land of the land of the comfortable, the land of excesses, the land of the perennial complainers nevertheless…sorry for the tangent but we got to keep a broader perspective on things.
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Biden certainly shares some blame for what is happening, but it is the Afghan leadership and military which is largely responsible for what is happening now. How is it that one can spend two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to train an army only to have it dissolve in week? It doesn’t help that the former Afghan president abandoned the country when they needed him most. The Americans knew that they were just holding their finger in the dike and that eventually the Taliban would be back. One can blame Biden for underestimating the swiftness of the takeover, but I don’t think one can blame him for withdrawing. Eventually the country had to stand on its own. Let’s just hope that as many people as possible get safe passage out of the country.
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Mel! How can you possibly blame Biden for the withdrawal from Afghanistan? Is was Trump who cozied up with the Taliban, and made the withdrawal agreement. Biden really had no choice but to facilitate that agreement, or the Republicans would have massively blamed Biden for any future US soldiers lost in the conflict. I realize you were probably, just hoping for some backlash on your comments, but you also didn’t offer any alternative scenarios for the safe end to the occupation, either. Biden, unlike Trump, listened to his military advisers, and chose this route to end the unwinnable war and bring the soldiers home.
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You’re dead on with this issue, Mel. I’m not only mad as hell at Biden, I’m madder than hell at Trudeau who has felt the need for a snap election to get a majority government is more important than to save the lives of friends and innocents. Did he think that putting heat on Biden’s lack of planning would cover up the lack of his own? I don’t know, but his clear priority of politics over people is despicable and deserves a complete thumping on this life and death issue in the coming election. Ian MacKenzie
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Did Biden actually say that? In what context was he supposed to have said that? You can not blame just Biden for the conduct of the country going back to the last global conflict.
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